The thing is, no one reviews "cheap A to B" cars well. They are also very bias to american foreign built cars. The reviews of the aveo were all poor. The cruze and sonic are a little better even though thy are essentially the "same" korean cars they were designed to be, yet from my reading the Spark still gets bad marks..

I have been to a few (very few) car press release tests. It was a terrible experience. Everyone basically followed the most "knowledgeable" guy around and wrote what he said. Everyone was free to test every car and take it on the track. When the personal testing started they all headed to the corvette, (it was a gm product review). I am not even sure everyone (anyone) drove every car. And just like many reviews sound like poor plagiarism's over other reviews, most of the people just went with consensus and not personal impression.